Here’s My Story: Inspiration For The Isolated

Rabbi Yaakov Blotner

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I grew up in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in an Orthodox home. Following my Bar Mitzvah, my parents wanted to send me to a yeshivah high school of which there were two in nearby Boston – one was Modern Orthodox and the other was Lubavitch. The Lubavitch yeshivah – which had been founded by the Previous Rebbe in the 1940s – proved to be a better fit for me, so that is where I enrolled.

During the summer of 1964, I was offered the opportunity to work as a junior counselor in Chabad’s Camp Gan Israel, which was then located in Swan Lake, in the Catskills. Even before this experience, I was taking on various Chabad customs, but by the time the summer was over, I was fully committed to the Chabad lifestyle and manner of religious observance.

During those years, it was the custom of my yeshivah to come into Crown Heights, New York, and participate in the Rebbe’s farbrengen on Shabbat Mevarchim Sivan – the Shabbat when we bless the new month of Sivan during which the Giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai is celebrated. These visits were very special to me and affected me deeply, and they led me to begin a correspondence with the Rebbe.

I was seventeen years old at the time, and I wrote to him about my plans for the future. I also asked various questions about Jewish law, which the Rebbe told me to send to Agudas Harabonim, the Union of Orthodox Rabbis.

When I graduated high school, I enrolled in Tomchei Temimim, the Chabad yeshivah in Crown Heights. One day shortly thereafter, quite unexpectedly, I received a very special letter from the Rebbe. The letter, written in Yiddish, was dated Tammuz 25, 5726 (July 13, 1966); I translate:

Greeting and blessing,

It has already been a long time since I have received a letter from you. Since every Jew is given the benefit of the doubt, and especially as you have merited to study in a division of the Tomchei Temimim Yeshivah, and you are doing so successfully, surely you are increasing your diligence and dedication in studying our holy Torah – both the Talmudic studies and Chassidut – and you are studying in the appropriate manner, whereby the studies lead to the observance of mitzvot in a beautiful way.

And regarding all of this we have been assured [by the Talmudic sages]: “One who comes to refine is assisted [by G-d].”

Surely you are observing [the study of] the three well-known daily portions of Chumash, Tehillim, and Tanya.
With blessing, in the name of the Rebbe,

S.M. Simpson,
Secretary

When I received that letter, I was very young and did not fully appreciate its significance. Only as time went on did I realize what a special privilege it was to receive such a letter from the Rebbe – that he noticed I hadn’t written in a while and that he took the initiative to reestablish the connection. Back then, my first thought was: “Oh no … the Rebbe is checking up on me. I’d better shape up.” Only later, with a more mature evaluation, did I come to feel his love for me and for every Jew.

Now, there are two different ways I could have interpreted the Rebbe’s letter. He quoted the Talmud which states that one who comes to refine is assisted, but it does not specify whether this is referring to refining oneself or refining others. So besides the simple understanding, which is that if one wants to refine himself, G-d will provide assistance, there is another interpretation, that if a person wants to refine others, he will be assisted.

And that is the message which I took away – and eventually understood as very important – that I should become involved in helping other Jews. This appealed to me, and I ended up working – as a paid worker and as a volunteer – in helping Jews who were isolated in one way or another, whether in prisons or mental hospitals. In fact, my business card reads: Inspiration for the Isolated.

Not long after I was privileged to receive this letter, I was also privileged to have a private audience with the Rebbe. Prior to that meeting, I was instructed by the Rebbe’s secretariat to write out my questions and concerns, which I did.

Among my concerns was that I had grown a full beard as per Chabad custom, but that in my hometown of Lawrence, beards were extremely rare and I feared negative feedback from people. The Rebbe dispelled this worry in an interesting way. He might have said that I should just do it anyway, and that I shouldn’t pay attention to what others say. But, instead, he flipped it by telling me that I was the one who was being cool by keeping up with the latest fashion. He actually said, “You can tell people that beards are now becoming fashionable – hippies have beards.”

Another thing I mentioned in my letter was my love of Jewish history, and especially of stories from older Jews in my neighborhood. To this the Rebbe responded by suggesting that I study Ein Yaakov, the compilation of stories and ethical teachings from the Talmud. (It had been compiled in the 16th century to make these teachings accessible without complex legal arguments.)

I began learning Ein Yaakov as a result of what the Rebbe said, and I continued doing so over the years. As well, when I had the occasion to teach it to others, I did so. It always meant something personal to me because of the Rebbe’s advice.

In 1967, I transferred to the Chabad yeshivah in Montreal. That year, the Rebbe launched his tefillin campaign, and I and my fellow yeshivah students became very involved in it. We would go to shopping centers, offices and colleges, and we’d even stand on street corners, hoping to interest Jewish men in putting on tefillin.

At this time, I got the idea of putting up a little tefillin booth outside of our yeshivah. Many Jewish teens passed our yeshivah on the way to and from school, and the booth would be perfect in inclement weather or if they didn’t want to do this right out in the street. I wrote to the Rebbe, and he replied, “I will mention it at the resting place [of the Previous Rebbe]. It is appropriate to do this at the present time.” So, with his blessing, we built the booth and it proved a big success.

In a small way, this was the beginning of my social activism, which led to my work with the isolated – a path which the Rebbe’s letter had set before me.

Rabbi Yaakov Blotner has served as a Chabad emissary in Worcester, Massachusetts, since 1972. He has specialized in kosher supervision and has also headed up the Jewish Chaplaincy Services, an organization which provides religious services to prisons and mental health hospitals. He was interviewed in January 2026.